Another Kind of Rossi

What if Michelangelo Rossi's keyboard Toccatas had been played by harpists in Rome 400 yearsago? Of all the 17th-century Italian keyboard repertoire I have attempted to play over the last thirtyyears, I find the Toccatas by Rossi to be by far the most organic, idiomatic and intuitive music to playon the arpa doppia, the chromatic triple-row Baroque harp of seventeenth-century Europe. At leastten harpists are known to have been active in Rome during this time, and archives are full of documentsand correspondence that detail performances, commissions for instruments, purchases ofstrings, harp covers and cases, and other fascinating information, which together create an idea of thewealth of music and culture before and during the reign of Pope Urban VIII.